Guns of the Dawn (49 page)

‘Thank you for showing me this,’ she said to Mallen. And then, when he made no response, ‘Thank you for rescuing me, for coming after me.’

The grin edged back then. ‘Pay my debts, understand? Be sure you do, too, when it’s your turn.’

Doctor Carling’s wife changed the dressings on her face and nodded in appreciation. ‘You are practically as new, Sergeant,’ she remarked. ‘You heal as
fast as any I’ve known. Youth, I suppose.’

Emily did not feel young. She had last felt young eight days ago with the arrival of dawn. That night, that impossible night, the escape across the canopy. It had seemed that she could never
tire, never die or grow old.

Now she felt about ninety, which was a good thirty years better than how she had felt the day before. It had all come home to roost, of course. As soon as she had stopped, with the camp in
sight, she had found herself barely able to walk.

Doctor Carling’s wife had told her, with some satisfaction, that she had counted some forty-seven separate wounds, bruises or strained joints on Emily’s body. Any other soldier would
still have been out on sentry duty within a day, she bitterly suspected, but no other soldier had come back so miraculously from the dead. No other soldier was being talked about by half the camp.
She had become the colonel’s darling, and he was determined that she would be given the best of care, whether she wanted it or whether she most emphatically did not. So it was that Sergeant
Marshwic was confined to the infirmary, and would be there until, at the very least, tomorrow.

She had told the doctor’s wife about Doctor Craulen and his medicine, and the woman had shrugged. It had meant nothing to her. She was not a doctor, after all.

‘I should be able to get up today,’ Emily argued. ‘I need to go back to my company.’

‘Your entire company has been here to see you almost every day,’ the doctor’s wife remarked drily. It was true enough; Emily was a hero, apparently, although she had thought
simply
escaping
was something short of a hero’s traditional trials and deeds. The attention had been tiring mostly. Men and women she barely recognized had come bustling in to offer
their congratulations.
How do they all know me?
she had wondered, as her hand had been shaken, as admiring girls of seventeen told her they wanted to be like her. Two men had even proposed
marriage, and she had been forced to have Doctor Carling’s wife evict them.

And the colonel had come, of course – he had come to her the first day she was awake. He had tired her out just by his being there, filling the infirmary with his chatter, the one
well-wisher the doctor’s wife could not send away.

And he had come with questions, dozens of questions about the Denlanders, their camp, their kit, their leader. She had answered them as truthfully as she could, and watched Captain Mallarkey
write it all down. From the first few words, she had been able to tell that the colonel did not quite believe her. In his opinion she was a woman recovering from a terrible ordeal, her mind not
quite right, that sort of thing. The Denlanders she described did not fit with those in his imagination, and so he had reworked her answers to fit his preconceptions.

‘Jolly well done, though,’ he had told her. ‘Splendid boost for the men, Marshwic. Couldn’t have asked for better. A real war-hero. There’ll be a medal for you, I
shouldn’t wonder, back home. The King himself’ll put it on you.’

‘That would be . . . nice, sir.’ Her reply had been a weak one. He had worn her out more than the Denlanders during their forced march, not with his interrogation but his constant
praise. The bonhomie of Colonel Resnic was not what she had wanted to wake to, her first day back to life.

‘Can’t have you just a sergeant, of course,’ he had gone on to muse. ‘Dashed shame that Mallen chap won’t be promoted. Irregular, but he’s a useful sort. Have
to keep him around, I suppose. Even though he looks like such a fearful creature.’

A very useful man, Colonel,’ she had said, with feeling.

‘What? I suppose so, suppose you would say that. Still, what I’m trying to say, Marshwic, hero and all, going to have to make you lieutenant. Can’t have more than one master
sergeant in a company, you see.’

He beamed at her, but the breath had gone out of her. She had felt as though she had been shot, after all, in the swamp, and not known until now. ‘Sir . . .’ had come her croak, but
she had been unable to get the sentence out.

‘My dear girl, what’s the matter?’ The colonel was all bluff frowns and incomprehension. ‘Can’t turn down a promotion, surely?’

‘Colonel . . . my . . . Lieutenant Salander, Colonel? He’s lieutenant of Stag Rampant. You . . . can’t have more than one lieutenant in a company either.’

The colonel had looked at her blankly for a moment, before understanding dawned at last. ‘Oh, yes, your cousin or something . . . ?’

‘My brother-in-law, Colonel.’

‘Ah, well, bad business that,’ he had said awkwardly, then, at her horrified face, he had hurriedly added, ‘Not dead, Marshwic. Not dead. Thinking of making him up to full
captain, now that Goss isn’t coming back. Just won’t be doing any real commanding outside camp. You’ve got the company on the field.’ He was human enough that he could not
look her in the face, but when he had tried to busy her with other topics she would have none of it, and had just stared at him until he found a pair of soldiers to take her to visit Tubal.

Tubal had been moved from the doctor’s hut to the clubhouse, lying up there in a bed Brocky had set for him. It had been his face she saw first: the same face that she knew, undamaged,
with two eyes and a grin – full of joy at seeing her. Only afterwards had she noticed the crutch propped up at his bedside, and only then the leg he had lost from just above the knee.

‘Oh, Tubal . . .’

‘Hell, could have been worse,’ he had pointed out. ‘You got me out of there, remember? I’d never have had the pleasure of the amputation if you hadn’t.’

She had wanted to make some brave, clever remark to match his, to show that she was a soldier and a woman of the world. Then everything had caught up with her: the horrors and confusion of the
battle; her capture; Doctor Lam’s insinuations about the King. Her eyes had filled with tears and she had knelt beside the bed and hugged Tubal close, despite her bruises, and wept into his
chest for all the blood and innocence that had been lost.

In the midst of the busy throng who came to visit her at the doctor’s hut, there had been at least a few moments with friends. First of all, Giles Scavian, who had
somehow survived the shots of the Denlanders, and who had then screened the Lascanne retreat with fire until his eyes had bled burning tears. While she was lashed to a frame in the Denlander camp,
he had lain collapsed on a bed right here in the infirmary, drained almost to death. She was more glad than she could say to see Giles Scavian again.

And yet, as he sat by her, her hand resting in his, something stood between them. She had a world of things she wanted to say, and she could not say them to him. She could not tell him about the
Denlanders, how they had really been. She could not tell him that the dreaded Doctor Lam was just an overwrought engineer with a moral dilemma. She could not tell him the lies of Denland against
his beloved King. He would rage, he would go mad. He was a King’s wizard, and she did not want to see that anger. The silences between them were calming, healing, but her words were bottled
up inside her, and she could not let them out.

Later there was Sergeant Caxton, the female man’s tailor with her new crown patch sewn crooked on her shoulder. It had not made her any less pale, any less worried. The added
responsibility weighed hard on her, and she obviously wished that, with Emily returned, she might return to obscurity herself. Emily had laughed at her for that, mocking her, asked her what sort of
a soldier was she, that she could turn down extra pay.

‘When they ever get round to paying us,’ Caxton had grumbled. ‘Besides,
Lieutenant
, you don’t look so happy with yours. You haven’t even sewn it
on.’

Lieutenant Marshwic.
It did not sound quite real to her. What fool would make her a lieutenant? The colonel would take it back before she left her sickbed, surely.

And at last, after it seemed that everyone from all three companies had come to tell her what a hero she was, there came John Brocky and, on his arm, Marie Angelline.

‘Well now,’ he said, trying a smile. ‘Look at this treatment. I never got this treatment when I was laid up here.’

‘The quality of the treatment is inversely proportional to the quantity of the complaints, Mr Brocky,’ came the sharp voice of Doctor Carling’s wife.

‘Listen, Doc—’

‘I am not a doctor, Mr Brocky. Carry on endearing yourself to me like this and you’d better hope you never end up here again.’

‘I have a bottle of whisky here that’s asking for you to go into the next room and not eavesdrop on us,’ Brocky suggested, dangling the contraband at his fingertips.

Doctor Carling’s wife approached him suspiciously, then pecked the bottle from his hand and left without another word.

‘God-awful woman,’ Brocky remarked, sitting. He still looked thinner than he had been when Emily had first met him. The loss of a layer of flab left him looking somehow more
vulnerable than before.

‘I hear congratulations are in order,’ said Angelline. ‘Marshwic, you should count yourself lucky. Fat Squirrel’s second spot is empty, but they won’t give it to
me. Pordevere won’t have a woman as his second, and I’ve not the clout to catch the colonel’s eye.’ She caught herself hurriedly. ‘Not that you don’t deserve it,
but . . .’

‘I know. The name, the family. It helps,’ Emily acknowledged. She had no wish to be a lieutenant – to be
in charge
, for heaven’s sake – when the next
assault came. She would gladly have shed her name, to dodge it.

Brocky wrung his hands anxiously. ‘Marie, could you . . . ? There’s something I need to run by Marshwic, a private something.’

Angelline clasped Emily’s hand. ‘See you on the line, Marshwic.’ And then she was gone.

‘What is it, Brocky?’

The big man grimaced. ‘Right, well . . . I reckon I’m probably not supposed to show you this, but I don’t know the man, so it doesn’t make a pox of difference to me. I
thought you’d want it, anyway.’

He handed her a folded letter, the wax seal on it broken. She recognized the handwriting immediately and looked up at him in surprise.

‘Oh, we’ve had quite a correspondence on, your Mr Northway and I,’ Brocky confirmed. ‘That messenger girl of his’s been running herself ragged up and down the line
from Chalcaster to Locke.’

She opened out the letter and read it carefully, and then again.

If I were a hero, I would set off myself
, he had written.
If I were a soldier . . .
‘Oh,’ she said.

Brocky shrugged. ‘You, er . . . Your man, is he, this Northway fellow . . . ?’ and she knew he was thinking about her and Scavian.

‘I don’t know, Brocky. He and I used to . . . I used to hate Cristan Northway more than anyone alive: history, family history. But since the war, things have been
different.’

‘War does that,’ observed Brocky sagely.

‘It’s difficult,’ she said.

‘Your life, your choices,’ he said. ‘Besides, all bets are off in wartime. After all, there’s no guarantee you’re going to see this Northway again, and all the
letters in the world aren’t going to change that.’
At least Scavians here
, followed the unspoken words.

‘You and Angelline seem to be . . .’

A broad, lewd and automatic leer split his face. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Yes indeed. I’ve no complaints there; her neither, for that matter.’ The leer stayed put, most
of it, but something retreated behind it. ‘I’ve my eye on a little practice in the capital, if it all works out. Or maybe I’ll go travelling with her players. You make plans, you
know . . . despite everything.’

‘You’ll be well set up for whatever you do, you and Mallen both,’ she observed. ‘Cristan – Mr Northway is good, I think, for his promise.’

‘Not that Mallen would know what to do with the money. He’d probably try and eat it or something, damned savage.’ Brocky stood up at last, stretching, then wincing as he felt
his scar pull. ‘You get some rest now. Your country’ll be calling on you soon enough.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘I won’t say anything about the letter to . . .
well, you know what I mean.’

‘I’m obliged, Brocky.’

*

And now here she was, one day away from enjoying the freedom of the camp again; just one day standing between her and the war.

She took out Mr Northway’s letter and read it again; she had lost count of how many times she had done so.

Too long, too late, too far.
It was all wrong, she knew. There must have been a point where she could have relaxed into the idea of his love. Perhaps that point had occurred before she
left for Gravenfield. Certainly it was before she had left for the front. All that time, slowly stripping herself of her hostility; all that time under his careful, sardonic wooing, and he had come
close, so close. She had overshot his love, somehow. She looked back on it from her current vantage point, looked back into her past.
What I might have had.

Perhaps that moment had come and gone while she was Doctor Lam’s prisoner. Perhaps if she had returned with the others, been present at camp for it, she would have met the moment and
embraced it. But now . . .

Mortality was at her shoulder now. Her brush with the enemy had brought it into focus, where before had been just a blur. She stared down at his neat handwriting, seeing in it a tremor, a hurry,
that had not been there in his earlier communications.